While the company is still listed on the member page of the ESA website, GamePolitics has learned from a knowledgeable source that Crave is no longer a member of the organization, which represents the interests of US video game publishers. Despite leaving ESA, Crave will be exhibiting at next month's E3.

It's unclear why Crave's departure was not made public. GamePolitics has requested comment from both Crave and the ESA on the decision.

Crave thus becomes the fifth publisher to leave the ESA this year, following earlier departures by Activision, Vivendi, LucasArts and id.

UPDATE: The ESA has confirmed Crave's departure, forwarding this statement from Rich Taylor, Senior Vice President of Communications and Research:

We can confirm that Crave has decided not to renew its membership in the ESA. We value each member of our association, but respect their decision. In conversations with Crave, representatives stated that they value their longstanding membership with the ESA and remain committed to the values and goals of the association.

UPDATE 2: Crave has confirmed with this statement from president Michael Maas:

Crave’s departure from ESA at this juncture is not a statement against the value provided by our longstanding membership, but rather was motivated by our need to focus on the impending sale of our company. We will be re-evaluating our decision, hopefully in the near future. Crave still supports the goals and aims of ESA.

Personally I am slightly hoping this leads to the downfall of the ESA and the rise of a better group, basically the group the ESA use to be before they screwed everything up. I think with everything thats happened it would be kind of hard for the ESA to get its good name back

-If shit and bricks were candy and tits, we'd all be livin' large.
For information on games and psychology, look up:
Jonathan Freedman(2002)Block and Crain(2007)Grand Theft Childhood, a book by Harvard Medical School researchers Larry Kutner and Cheryl

Reality/////////////////////////////////////Fantasy. Seems like a pretty thick line to me...

Forgot replacing Gallagher. I say scrap and replace and possibly rebuild the ESA. Toss in some competition, give the game companies more options. Who knows, this might even have the effect of having happy companies to make better games for we gamer types.

Don't forget that the ESA represent the member companies and their policies, so if these are sticking point issues with you, blame and fight the companies themselves. The ESA (like all lobbying groups and associations do in theory) just do what their members tell them what to do.

If this is indeed true, then I would imagine that Crave and the ESA agreed to keep their departure quiet until after E3.

Personally, I don't see this so much as a protest of the ESA as it is a protest of Mike Gallagher, and I have to think that if Gallagher were dismissed tomorrow, all five publishers would be back with the ESA by the end of July if the man who'd replace Gallagher showed himself to not be a complete dope.

Difficult to say if any of them would be back soon. Right now we've got a couple possiblities of why companies are jumping ship. First is that they're fed up with Gallagher. Second is that they're unhappy with the increased costs associated with experimenting with E3.

Reinstituting member fees based on E3 instead of revenue-based fees would solve several problems. But in doing so, the publishers would have to admit that they were wrong in wanting to downsize E3, which is going to take a little more time and embarrassment before they can admit that.

Not in the USA. We have the EMA whichrepresents game retailers and the ECA which represents consumers. We also have the IGDA which represents the developers, the actual people not companies. For game development or publishing companies, we have only the ESA.

Can we start a Will Mike Gallagher be fired watch? It may not really be happening, but maybe it'll wake up ESA's board of directors/member companies/whoever hires & fires the President to take a good look at this guy. I'm still under the belief that an ESA is better than no ESA (maybe just for the fact that it strikes down assinine laws).

the thing is I kinda want to know the true reasoning not that "PR" bull that is being shoved out the door to leave such a large organization and everybody all happy happy joy joy sounds REALLY fishy????

So far we have had only the big companies leave, the type that a outsider (or even insider perhaps) look at and go "Oh, well they probably think they can do a better job defending themselves personaly, they have the money." People like Blizzard and id have, no doubt, significant money they can use to defend themselves in court (legal and public opinion).

However, now you have the first indication that the small companies which may not have the cashflow and ability to defend thier own games (even if none have been contriversal) leaving the group. They probably got more benifit per dollar then the big companies, since ESA probably acts in equal interest (well, idealy at any rate.) So it is the small company that one would think would NEED the ESA, and they are abandoning the ESA now?

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ZippyDSMlee: .....win8 hates any left over hidden install partitions from other version of windows....only waste 5 hours finding that out...its ahrder than you think keeping up with 4 or 5 HDDS......03/03/2015 - 4:44am

Matthew Wilson: I am going to pax east, any games you guys want me to check out?03/02/2015 - 11:23pm

ZippyDSMlee: No one remembers the days of Cinemagic and Cynergy eh? :P, meh even MGS is getting to film like....03/02/2015 - 8:44pm

MechaTama31: I was about to get all defensive about liking Metal Gear Solid, but then I saw that he was talking about "cinematic" as a euphemism for "crappy framerate".03/02/2015 - 8:29pm

prh99: Just replace cinematic with the appropriate synonym for poo and you'll have gist of any press release.03/02/2015 - 5:34pm

Monte: Though from a business side, i would agree with the article. While it would be smarter for developers to slow down, you can't expect EA, Activision or ubisoft to do something like that. Nintnedo's gotta get the third party back.02/28/2015 - 4:36pm

Monte: Though it does also help that nintendo's more colorful style is a lot less reliant on graphics than more realistic games. Wind Waker is over 10 years old and still looks good for its age.02/28/2015 - 4:33pm

Monte: With the Wii, nintnedo had the right idea. Hold back on shiny graphics and focus on the gameplay experience. Unfortunatly everyone else keeps pushing for newer graphics and it matters less and less each generation. I can barely notice the difference02/28/2015 - 4:29pm

Monte: ON third party developers; i kinda think they should slow down to nintendo's pace. They bemoan the rising costs of AAA gaming, but then constantly push for the best graphics which is makes up a lot of those costs. Be easier to afford if they held back02/28/2015 - 4:27pm

Matthew Wilson: http://www.forbes.com/sites/insertcoin/2015/02/28/the-world-is-nintendos-if-only-theyd-take-it/ I think this is a interesting op-ed, but yeah it kind of is stating the obvious.02/28/2015 - 2:52pm